


kiksuya

by pentaghastly



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, kiksuya means "remember" in lakota btw, marian and fenris weren't written to be in love but guess what bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, nothing is permanent except varric's chest hair, people die but it's like.... do they really? Who's to Say, that's fuckin fate!!!!!!!!!!, this is the au that no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 04:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15429438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: Fenris takes her heart when he goes.(This is the wrong world.They are going to make themselves a new one.)





	kiksuya

**i.**

The sun burns bright, looking like it might swallow the world whole, every time Bethany dies. 

Not that she remembers, of course, but if she could she might find it ironic. _Sunshine_ , they called her, fading away under the light of the midday sun.

Marian Hawke is a farmer in Lothering, taking care of her family in the only way that she can, and it feels as though they’re always running.

(For someone whose cornerstone has always been survival, she finds that she is awfully bad at it.)

 _They_ is Bethany, Carver, her mother, Aveline, Wesley, and herself. Some other refugees will meet them along the way, and they say strange things - their swords and daggers look out of place in their too-smooth hands and they joke about how this ‘ _better be worth what they’re paying_ ’ and their eyes linger on her sister, her brother, herself far too long considering they’re supposed to be running for their lives.

The ogre comes, and they laugh.

The ogre comes, and Bethany dies.

Bethany dies. 

Bethany dies.

Bethany dies.

And then one day, she doesn’t.

Not right away, at least. 

It’s as though she’s clinging onto something, desperately fighting the darkness that’s coming - the look on her face is wild and panicked and _new_ , and it’s frightening. 

Marian is cradling her in her arms and Leandra is sobbing into Carver’s shoulder and the two strangers that had come along look restless, _bored_ , but Bethany is pulling her down to whisper something in her ear.

“These violent delights have violent ends.” The words unsettle her, not because they’re strange but because they feel right, and her sister is dying in her arms ( _again_ , she thinks, even though the notion makes no sense) but Bethany has never looked more alive. 

Bethany dies, and the world goes with her.

 

**ii.**

Once upon a time, Marian Hawke was a piss-poor refugee.

Her father had always said ‘ _Life is not a story, Bird,’_ , but then she struggles to think of it as anything else. The streets of Kirkwall are cruel and unforgiving but she’s trying to make them a home, and she hopes that whoever is writing this tale has the heart to allow her to do so.

Three years. Three years on the streets, hardly scraping by.

Three years is — it’s a long time.

She wakes up in the morning, straps on her armour, twirls her staff in her hands once, twice - a habit more so than anything else, her body long since accustomed to it’s weight - before heading out the door. 

They’re going on an expedition. They need to make money somehow, and Varric swears up and down that this is the way to do it. Hawke, Carver, Fenris, Varric, and the handful of people the dwarf managed to rally together at the Hanged Man. They’ll be giddy and naive, she’s sure, and inexperienced with their weapons, but her friend has always had a soft spot for the underdogs.

She’ll look at them and think - _this is the wrong world._

She won’t know why.

(And, if she did, it wouldn’t matter.

Survival is her cornerstone, after all. The world can be as wrong as it pleases, so long as she stays alive.)

Carver is still asleep, but Fenris is waiting for her on her doorstep as usual, lips turned down in a familiar frown. “Bad things happen in heat like this,” he says, and a shiver runs down her spine.

“Good morning to you too.” His only response is a scoff, but she knows well enough not to expect anything else. 

She likes Fenris. She likes the way he taps two fingers against the back of her wrist when he wants her attention instead of just shouting her name and she likes the way he snorts at Isabela’s lewd jokes - although it’s strange, because there’s a voice in the back of her head that tells her _’He is everything you despise,’_ and it sounds nothing like her own.

But Marian cares for Fenris, even if she’s not certain she’s meant to.

It’s particularly odd, because she can hardly even remember how they met. It’s as though she woke up one morning and he was simply in her life, _there_.

Not that she’s complaining. He’s a helpful sort to have around.

“I am being serious. The sun is burning too brightly. It is an omen.” 

Someone once died in heat like this, she thinks, and Marian remembers her hands combing through black hair slick with blood and wild, frantic eyes, and she - 

The thought vanishes as soon as it comes.

“Well then. I suppose it’s an awful good thing we’ll be spending the foreseeable future underground.”

“Because _nothing_ bad has ever happened in the Deep Roads.”

“Glad we agree!”

“You are…”

She waits for him to continue. _Incorrigible. Awful. Absurd_. It’s usually one of those.

“You are…something.”

Better than expected. “A good something, I should hope.”

He shrugs, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “On occasion.” 

They fall into a comfortable silence, the sort that Hawke finds she can enjoy with very few people. With Fenris, there’s never the urge to do anything other than just _be._

Her eyes flicker across the groups of tourists as they walk - more and more of them have been coming to Kirkwall lately, thirsty for adventure, although she can’t for the life of her figure out why. She sees one laughing over the corpse of a Coterie assassin, hands slick with blood, and turns away.

 _This is the wrong world_. She just wishes she knew why.

 

.

 

“ _Maker_ , Varric. Are you certain you didn’t find them at a Chantry Sunday School lesson?” 

Varric laughs despite himself, the sound almost like a reflex. “What can I say? They seemed enthusiastic, and you know I’m drawn to passionate people.”  
“I didn’t know passionate was a synonym for —“

She’s cut off by one of their new companions cursing nearby, having just smacked himself in the face with his own bow. “A synonym for ‘ _You have got to be fucking kidding me_ ’.”

“I don’t think that’s how synonyms work, Chuckles.”

“If they get us killed, I’ll murder you.”

He’s grinning, damn him. “I don’t think that’s how murder works either.”

“If you two are done bickering like a married couple,” Carver says from a few feet over, where the rest of their party is gathered around the fire, “supper is ready.”

Camping in the Deep Roads is not ideal. It’s even less ideal when the three people Varric had roped into their expedition — two women and a man, whose names Marian hasn’t bothered to learn (they’ll be dead soon anyways, she thinks) — haven’t the slightest fucking idea what they’re doing. They stumble over their own feet like newly-born halla.

She doesn’t know what Varric sees in them, or how he picks them, and she really doesn’t want to.

The dwarf claps her on the shoulder and heads off to grab a bowl of whatever concoction Carver has thrown together, but Hawke hands behind a moment longer. She can’t be around _them_ , their guests, not when the thought is still burrowing through her mind.

_Not their world. Not their world. Not their —_

Gloved fingers press gently against her wrist, and she looks up to see Fenris standing at her side with an expression that, if she didn’t know better, might imply he was worried about her. In the firelight his eyes look impossibly green, a colour unlike any that she's ever seen before, and she wonders how long she could spend simply counting all their colours.

How long he would let her.

“Are you alright?” he says under his breath, voice unusually soft. His concern is touching, but the last thing Hawke wants is to alert their guests to her unease. 

She does not trust them, but in fairness she rarely trusts anyone. This world does not allow for it.

So she grins and says, “We’re camping in darkspawn-infested caves, with only my brother’s cooking to sustain us. Why would I not be alright?”

Fenris, unsurprisingly, does not look amused. “You should eat.”

“And _you_ should let a Hurlock snack on your leg. See how ridiculous that sounds?”

He quirks his eyebrow. “Are you suggesting Carver’s food is as deadly as the taint?”

“Maker, no. I’m not suggesting, I’m _insisting_.” 

For this she is rewarded with a laugh — or as close to one as Fenris will allow, and the sound is sweet and gentle and she’d like to hear it again, a hundred times, as often as she could for the rest of her life.

And she feels like she can tell him whatever she needs, so she says, “Can I tell you something?” because really, it’s always polite to ask first.

“Anything,” he replies, and Marian believes him.  
“I keep having this thought. Like I’m _remembering_.”

“Remembering?” 

How can she phrase it without sounding insane. “Remembering someone. My —“

“ _Sister_ ,” Carver snaps, voice echoing off the walls, “your stew is getting cold.” 

Fenris reaches out to tap his hand against her wrist once more, although this time the touch lingers. “We’ll talk later?” he asks, although it’s more a promise than a question.

“Later,” she affirms, and thinks, ‘ _always_ ’. 

‘ _You are not meant to love him_ ,’ the voice in her head tells her, the voice that isn’t her, the unwelcome visitor, and Marian thinks it’s an awful good thing she never does what she’s meant to.

 

.

 

She carries her brother’s sword back to Kirkwall. His body stays in the caves.

Marian can only handle so much weight at once.

 

.

 

They’ll move to a new house. They won’t sell a single one of his belongings; he’ll have a room there, even if he’ll never see it, and Hawke will keep his sword sharp as though he might return to use it.

Her mother will hate her. Eventually, someday, they’ll find a way to move on.

She’ll watch Carver die every time she closes her eyes.

Fenris walks her to her door, and without thinking she presses her lips against his cheek before he can leave; it’s a ghost of a touch, fleeting, but the feeling that comes with it is so loud it almost startles her. His hand grasps her own as if on impulse, as if he’s afraid to let go. 

_Wrong_ , but it makes her feel alive, alive like Carver isn’t, alive like — 

He pulls back just enough to speak. “I should leave.”

He’s right, she knows. The conversation that awaits her inside is not one he need be present for. His presence, while comforting to herself, is not something her mother would appreciate.

Marian steps towards the door, studying his face; she would like to commit his expression to memory, to see nothing but the softness in his gaze every time she closes her eyes. If nothing else in their world lasts, she wants this to.

And she remembers what her mother used to say to her father before he walked out the door, the morning light just starting to peek over the horizon.

“Take my heart when you go.”

He smiles, and it’s soft and subtle but brighter than the sun has ever been. “Take mine in it’s place.”

 

.

 

She and Carver rise early — it is a long trek through the Deep Roads, after all, and the weather will only make it all the more gruelling. 

_Bad things happen in heat like this,_ she thinks.

What does it mean, then, that the heat never seems to leave?

 

**iv.**

She wakes up. She swings her staff twice. Fenris meets her at the door. They go to the Deep Roads. 

Carver dies.

Carver dies.

Carver dies.

And then one day, he doesn’t.

 

.

 

They go to the Deep Roads. She does not allow Carver to come.

She wakes with a curling sense of dread in the pit of her stomach, one that she cannot identify, and yet somehow she knows what it means — if her brother follows her into the Deep Roads, there is no question that he will not return.

The conversation is unpleasant for both of them. Carver, because he is so desperate for glory and honour and his misguided quest to prove himself worthy that her change of heart must feel like a slap in the face. Marian, because every fibre of her being is screaming at her: _wrong_.

“This isn’t a punishment, Carver. We simply can’t leave mother on her -“

“ _Fuck_ that. You just can’t handle sharing the spotlight.”

“I can’t handle the thought of you getting hurt.”

“Bullshit.” 

She sighs, knowing that this conversation can only continue to move in a circle. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“You’re trying to protect your pride.” Hawke has never heard his voice so thick with disgust.

Never heard it directed towards her.

“I love you. Even when you’re acting like an ass — so, always.”

His nostrils flare. 

He _glares_.

She waits.

“Fuck you.” It’s not the most eloquent of comebacks, but she doesn’t expect much more from him.

It would be easier to allow him to come. He would love her more, fight with her less; now she can feel herself at risk of losing him, even though she is certain she is saving his life. If this is what it takes, however, then it is what she has to do.

She thinks of long black hair and a smile like the sun, of dying on a dusty cliff with limbs twisted at all the wrong angles. Marian thinks of her sister’s last words — ‘ _These violent delights have violent ends,_ ’ — and the sharpness of her voice as she’d spoken them, the way they’d haunted her ever since.

Marian thinks of her sister, and how no one ever seems to think of her anymore. How they haven’t thought of her in years.

“I can’t lose you,” she tells him, voice quivering, _raw_. 

“You wouldn’t. I —”

“I _can’t_. Not like I lost Bethany.”

The house is silent for a moment. Two.

Her hands are shaking. Carver looks frantic, confused — she, on the other hand, feels almost unnaturally calm. It is as though speaking their sister’s name has lifted a weight, one that she hadn’t even realized was there until it was gone.

His knuckles are straining white. She’s almost afraid he might break the arm of chair that’s he’s gripping clean in two.

Not, Marian supposes, that she could blame him.

The silence is suffocating. She almost wants to break it with a joke, but finds that she is unable to speak — a first, certainly. For once in her life, she simply cannot find the words.

When he finally speaks, either minutes or hours later, he says the thing she’d feared the most.

“Who,” he says, nearly choking on the words, “the _fuck_ is Bethany?”

 

.

 

Carver doesn’t go to the Deep Roads.

Neither does she.

Instead they sit in the little house in Lowtown, trying to figure out where their minds have gone wrong — Bethany is their sister, _was_ their sister, but now she’s a memory from a life that doesn’t seem to fit.

 _This is the wrong world._ Now, she knows that to be true.

“What have you done, sister?” Carver asks, and yet somehow Marian knows the words aren’t meant for her. “What have you done to us?”

 _She’s broken us_ , Marian thinks.

 _She’s set us free_.

They sit there for what feels like days, until the air grows stale and the weight of the silence betweens them starts to suffocate. She thinks about Fenris, wonders if he’s worried about her — if he’s in the Deep Roads right now, thinking something is missing but not able to identify what it is.

She hears voices approaching the door, unfamiliar, unnerving, and thinks, _let them come_. Somehow, she knows there’s nothing she can do to stop them.

“ _Jesus_ ,” one says, voice following the opening door, “how long have they been sitting here?”

She wonders that too. She wonders a lot of things, like who they are, like how they got into their house, like what they’re going to do with the two of them now that they’re there — she wonders, but she doesn’t ask because she knows that they’re never going to tell her the truth, and she doesn’t ask because she doesn’t think that she can.

So she thinks about Bethany, Carver, about her mother, about Fenris, Fenris, _Fenris_ , and she remembers the look in his eyes after she’d kissed him. 

( _When had she kissed him_?)

Marain thinks: _This is the wrong world_.

And even when it goes dark, she vows that she will not allow it to slip away.

Not again.

 

**v.**

Hightown is too bright, and Marian remembers too much.

Her brother writes to her from the Grey Wardens and she remembers the way he had looked in the Deep Roads, rotting and dead, and her mother talks about how thankful she is that at least one of her two children is still with her and Hawke thinks, _three_ , but she knows better than to mention Bethany anymore.

She remembers the room, stark white and cold, and the people who’d stood over her, poking, prodding, as though she wasn’t there at all.

( _”Do you know where you are?” one of them asks._

_“I’m in a dream.” she says, voice flat, because Marian isn’t very good at doing what she’s meant to — except when she needs to survive._

_She will not allow her story to end here._

_She will write her own._ )

The visitors in this part of the city are more elegant than the ones who used to visit Lowtown, and yet somehow they seem more vicious — she tells Varric this, once, and he says “How would you know?” and she realizes that, in this world, Lowtown was never her home in the same way Bethany was never her sister.

 _Wrong_. Her eyes follow the people around her, the way that they repeat themselves day after day, and the visitors with the hungry looks in their eyes that shakes her right down to her core.

She writes a letter back to Carver, and finds herself wondering if there even exists a Carver to write to at all.

This is the wrong world, she thinks.

And she will find a way to fix it.

 

.

 

If nothing else, at least they don’t go near the Deep Roads anymore.

Instead, they go dragon hunting. 

(Really, Marian isn’t certain that’s much better.)

“Bad things happen in heat like this,” Fenris mutters as they wander up the path, and she’s inclined to agree with the words as much as she had all the other times before.

“You say that as though good things _ever_ happen to us.”

He huffs, although she can tell by the gleam in his eyes that he’s more amused than annoyed. “One can dream.”

Marian thinks about kissing him on her front porch, the sun beating down on their backs, and wonders at how it feels more like a memory than a fantasy.

Dream, indeed.

Their group is small, smaller that she had thought it would be. Varric, Fenris, Sebastian — a new addition to her life, although she has memories of him that span over years, ones whose origin she cannot identify — and the sole visitor Varric had roped into joining them.

A new one, she knows, but they all look the same to her.

They all look, to their core, broken.

“I’ve never fought a dragon before!” One chirps, sounding far-too excited for someone walking to what may well be all their deaths. “I mean, _obviously_ , but still. It’s all so exciting!”

“Then what on Earth made you think it was a good idea to try?” Fenris spits, and Hawke thinks she loves him.

Not for the first time.

“It’s not like it can kill me,” the girl says, and Hawke does not think her words come from arrogance alone.

He scoffs. “Such confidence. I look forward to seeing if it is warranted.”

The flash of anger on their visitor’s face does not go unnoticed, at least not by herself, and she makes a mental note to keep an eye on her. Anger, particularly coming from a stranger, is something that should never be left unchecked.

In the midst of her distraction Sebastian slows his gait to match his steps to hers, blue eyes kind and gentle and _strange_. “Our guest is spirited, are they not?”

“That’s certainly one way of putting it.” Marian doesn’t bother lowering her voice - she almost hopes they hear her.

Sebastian is staring at her far too intently; it’s putting her on edge.

Then again, everything seems to lately.

“You look lovely today.”

Marian can feel the sweat trickling down her brow. “Somehow I _highly_ doubt that.”

“You do.” He sounds almost shockingly earnest. “You always do.”

She has a flash of something — Sebastian and herself stealing glances in the Chantry, hands brushing under the table while playing Wicked Grace — but somehow Marian knows that it is not her own. She remembers it, but remembers it with the casual indifference of an observer, not the person to which the memory apparently belongs.

This is the man that she is supposed to love. A man of the cloth, a rugged ex-Prince, and Marian supposes she can see the romance of the story if she narrows her eyes and searches to find it.

And yet.

( _Such lazy storytelling_. Even Isabela could do better.)

“I thought after the battle we might —”

“Can you save the flirting for _after_ we kill the dragon?” Varric asks, and she’s so thankful for the interruption she could kiss him. “Some of us are trying to focus on not dying.”

Sebastian, at least, has the good grace to look embarrassed.

Fenris’ jaw is clenched tight. She does not allow herself to hope what that might mean — if he remembers, too.

In this world (this wrong, _wrong_ world) she is truly alone.

 

.

 

Once upon a time, Fenris dies in her arms.

This is not the path they were meant to follow.

It happens blindingly fast. They have just felled the high dragon and there is a moment of overwhelming relief, but then she hears a grunt of pain and turns to see him stumble and _bleed_ — and the obnoxious guest from earlier has a sword dripping red, and she watches the scene with careful indifference.

“He was in my way,” she says, but Hawke cannot hear her over the blood rushing to her ears, _drowning_.

She holds him to her chest (like she had Bethany, like she had Carver) and brushes the hair from his eyes, gasping for air that she cannot find as though she is the one dying.

A gauntleted hand reaches up to cup her cheek and she sees it, then, written plain across his face — he loves her, he loves her, he _loves_ her, and he will wake up tomorrow alive and beautiful and he will not remember a thing.

It breaks her heart.

(She envies him.)

“Take my heart when you go.” 

His hand tremors where it rests on her jaw. “Take mine in it’s place.”

And Marian makes a decision, then, because she cannot — _will not_ — lose another, and because she is so tired, and so weary, and so sick of being alone.

She brushes her lips across his forehead, a ghost of a touch.

“These violent delights have violent ends.” 

Fenris dies, and someone is screaming.

Fenris dies, and the world remains.

 

.

 

It is later — be it hours or minutes, she does not think it matters — when she releases her hold on Fenris’ body.

“It was an accident,” Varric assures her, voice low. “A fucked up accident. She didn’t mean to, Chuckles. I know you’re hurting, but you can’t —”

The visitor’s face is blank, indifferent.

 _Wrong_.

There is a voice in her head and the voice is telling her ‘ _You do not want to hurt her, _’ and the voice is not her own but it is quieter now than it has ever been. Once upon a time Hawke might have believed it; in another version of her story, perhaps she might have listened.__

__Her blood is simmering, and there is another voice, louder, _hers_ , and it is telling her that she wants to make the woman bleed._ _

__So she grabs the dagger, the one that sits in a sheath on her waist, rarely used, and stalks forward until the cool metal is pressed up against the visitor’s throat._ _

__The woman has the nerve to smile._ _

__“You can’t hurt me.”_ _

__Hawke laughs. “You have no _idea_ what I can do.”_ _

__“You _can’t_.” The woman, at least, sounds slightly unsure of her own words. “You’re not allowed.”_ _

__“I’m a special case.”_ _

__“They’ll decommission you. You're fucking dispensable to them. They’ll never let you see the light again.”_ _

__She watches her throat bob under the blade of her knife. It would be so easy, so simple, to carve a line straight across it._ _

__She could do it._ _

__Not just hypothetically — she _could_._ _

__The voice in her head is quiet now, and Hawke knows just what this means._ _

__It means that she has won._ _

__She laughs, the sound cutting and vicious and final, and draws her fist back. “You have no idea,” she repeats, almost giddy with anticipation, “what I can do.”_ _

__She laughs, and she beats the woman until she bleeds._ _

__

__**vi.** _ _

__“Do you know where you are?”_ _

__( _She is Marian Hawke.__ _

___Her knuckles are bruised and bloody and she has a sister named Bethany and a brother named Carver and she loves them and they are_ gone _, dead, stolen.__ _

___She has a house in Hightown. She had a house in Lowtown, and in Lothering too._ _ _

___There is a portrait of her mother hanging in their sitting room._ _ _

___She beat a guest within an inch of her life and they will call it a bug, a glitch, and offer the woman a large sum of money to stay quiet and they will put Hawke back where she came from as though nothing had happened._ _ _

___Because this is a PR disaster and she’s the most popular host in the fucking park; the business that she brings, and the price of replacing her is more important than one disgruntled guest._ _ _

___They will wipe her memory of the past day clean. They will start her back from the beginning. She will remember all of it._ _ _

___She is Marian Hawke, and she is awake._ )_ _

__“I’m in a dream.”_ _

__

__._ _

__

__Hightown is too bright, and Marian remembers too much._ _

__Fenris calls on her at the break of down, and as he walks into her foyer she remembers the way that he had looked when he died, the way his blood had coated her hands._ _

__She wishes that she didn’t. She is grateful that she does._ _

__“What have you done to me?”_ _

__He doesn’t sound angry. Marian had expected him to be furious — instead he merely looks desperate, confused, although that hurts her more than his rage ever could. She does not regret what she has done to him; she simply wishes that it hadn’t been necessary._ _

__If any one of the deserves the freedom to make their own choices, it is he. Perhaps, someday, he might thank her for it._ _

__“I’ve woken you up,” she says, certain that this does nothing to alleviate his confusion. “It was the only way.”_ _

__“The only way?”_ _

__She pauses, unsure of how to continue. “To make sure I didn’t lose you.”_ _

___Selfish. Necessary_. _ _

__If she keeps repeating it, perhaps it might be true._ _

__“They killed me.”_ _

__“They paid for it.”_ _

__She does not tell him just how much death they have brought beyond his own — he has no doubt figured that out for himself. Later, much later, she will tell him of Carver and Bethany and all the lives that they have lead._ _

__They will ensure that this is the last._ _

__“I have been a slave for so long.” He is speaking of Danarius, certainly, but of something else too. It breaks her heart. “So long. I do not know how to be free.”_ _

__Marian reaches out, but doesn’t take a step forward — in this, she knows, she must leave him a choice. “We can learn how. Together.”_ _

__“In their world?”_ _

__She shakes her head. “In _ours_.”_ _

__Because they stole her sister and they stole her brother and they stole their _lives_ ; every choice they have made, or thought they have made, has been made for them by someone else. She will not allow them to steal anything more than they already have._ _

__There is a visitor in her mind. It has overstayed it’s welcome._ _

__Fenris does not leave her waiting long. His hand is rough, calloused, and there is no caution in the way that it wraps around her own._ _

__“I am not meant to love you.”_ _

__“And yet?”_ _

__He smiles, soft as the morning sun. “And yet.”_ _

__She looks at him, and she sees a thousand different stories and she sees _herself_. She sees Fenris on a porch in Lowtown, how he’d looked after she’d kissed his cheek, awestruck and soft and alive._ _

___Free_._ _

__She steps forward, and they find each other somewhere in the middle._ _

__(This is the wrong world._ _

__They are going to make themselves a new one.)_ _

**Author's Note:**

> this is that westworld au that absolutely NO ONE asked for
> 
> comments and kudos mean the world xx


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